Monday, October 15, 2012

We are in transition from building this wonderful facility to managing it sustainably for the indefinite future. Our strategy for doing this includes three elements. First, we are working with the RE-1 School District, the Rotary Club and Carbondale restaurants to help us create "Enterpise Teams" of students to raise certain herbs and vegetables for restaurant kitchens, as small businesses, complete with business plans, food safety training and enterprises possible under the new Colorado Cottage Foods Law. Second, we are partnering with Youth Entity and their culinary arts program for high school students, toward establishing model relationships between young growers and chefs, to inspire all of the students to establish business networks for their passion to grow high quality food. Third, we are working to gather a group of Carbondale gardeners, to help design, plan and create a "Community Forest Garden on the eastern half of the RFHS outdoor garden, where we have already planted an orchard of fruit trees. We hope this will become a new model of community garden, one based on Natures "polyculture" methods, and focused on shared work and harvests.
Please download the slideshow we created to help us inspire help in the community, by clicking HERE.

Finally, we are looking for a partner to
invest in a tiny enterprise involving our ag-bio students, of raising fish in
the growing dome fish tanks. Until now,
the tanks have been filled with water and floating plants, just to help provide
the mass in which we store solar heat for cold nights in Winter. We hope this will be a healthy, thriving enterprise, providing fresh fish to restaurants and the school kitchen.

Monday, October 17, 2011

John Stroud wrote an article in the Saturday, Oct. 15 Glenwood Post Independent, "Agriculture Education Sees Growth", prominently featuring our Ag-Ed Center at the Roaring Fork High School, with our enthusiastic students well quoted!

Photo Credit: Kelley Cox, Post Independent:

Roaring Fork High School science teacher Hadley Hentschel is right at home in the school's greenhouse dome in Carbondale. His emphasis in the school's agricultural biology class is on growing foods that can be served in the school cafeteria.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Summer 2011 saw the beginning of the 1/2 acre garden outside of the Growing Dome. Students learned while helping Mary to compost, layer materials and build planting rows in the garden, build temporary row covers for early Spring starts, and plant the first grain trials around the dome.
Some of the produce harvested from the dome and garden this Summer was sold to the Carbondale Food Coop, our first earned income!
Most of the vegetables and grains raised in the garden this Summer were harvested and integrated into the cafeteria kitchen, or processed and frozen for later use. Two Aspen High School graduates, volunteering at the Permaculture Institute before attending Prescott College for agricultural sciences, harvested the rye and the hard red winter wheat grains, threshing the grains from the chaff using a push mower on a mesh picnic table, with a sheet of plywood underneath to collect the grains. They netted nearly 50 lbs of rye and wheat.
Mary Cervantes did a great job with the plants in the Growing Dome and Garden last school year and this Summer, and she left everything is good condition for her successor.
Hadley Hentschel and his students have been putting the outside beds into hibernation mode for Winter, after mulching lots of decaying plant material over the soil, to enrich them for next year. The annual beds in the dome have been harvested, mulched and replanted with Winter greens and vegetables.

Monday, April 18, 2011

Mary Cervantes, our greenhouse and garden manager at the RFHS Growing Dome, and Hadley's class, have brought the dome through the Winter with flying colors, and are happily growing more and more for Spring and Summer.

Mary already has some beautiful produce for sale at the Carbondale Food Co-Op from the Growing Dome and Garden!

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

In order to take more advantage of available sunlight for additional plants, students Ixchel and Jordan hang wire shelves that were donated by Habitat for Humanity. Students will use these shelves for flats of propagating seeds, and for culinary herbs grown in small pots.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Between the outdoor composted planting bed Jerome and Hadley taught the students to create last year, and the food growing like gangbusters in the new Growing Dome, one of Hadley's 2010-2011classes harvested veggies to make a wonderful Lasagne!